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352 OCCULT JAPAN. to by mental acts so out of every-day experi- ence as to lead hastily credulous persons to attribute them to some sort of supernatural power. For the hypnotic subject will dis- play an amount of knowledge of which in his normal state he is known not to possess even the rudiments. Sometimes his appar- ently supernatural insight can be traced to the resurrection of memories faint at the time of their experiencing and long since lapsed ; but sometimes it is due to the actual ex post facto creation of consciousness out of brain processes of which there was no con- sciousness at the time of their occurrence. Now our present theory, whatever its merits or demerits may be, is at least able to give an explanation of this phenomenon. If consciousness be nerve-glow, a local mo- lecular change of the cells due to a forced arrest of the neural current from temporary or permanent impermeability of path, it is precisely in the generally torpid brain of the hypnotic subject that it should be most acute. That his brain generally is torpid is shown by the fact that action does not spon- taneously take place in it. When, however, a current is induced from the only starting*